Notes from the 2025 Salzburg Festival ( 1 ) A Recital with Igor Levit filling in for Evgeny Kissin

Salzburg Festival • Recitals | D-S-C-H • ex-Kissin | Igor Levit

Whispered Brahms, Affectatious Shostakovich

Substituting for Evgeny Kissin is no picnic – even for Igor Levit. But at least he tried.

The solo recital with Evgeny Kissin, part of Salzburg’s “DSCH” series of concerts, had to go ahead without its planned soloist who had fallen ill on short notice. He was going to play the same program he gave in late March at the Musikverein. Shostakovich, who died exactly fifty years ago that week, at least, remained the focus of the second half, thanks to Igor Levit, who stepped in for his colleague and left that part similar enough. In fact, on paper, the Second Sonata was still the same piece. Musically, everything was fundamentally different, though – including said sonata.

D.Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues op.87 Igor Levit Sony (2021) US | UK | DE

D.Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues op.87 Keith Jarrett ECM (1992) US | UK | DE

The surge, seriousness, and underlying humor that Kissin had drawn out were blown away. In their place came playfulness, a murmur, a small-small in stubborn mezzopiano – here and there interrupted by an occasional furious, note-snatching dash across the keyboard. Musical incidents that each stood like a monolith amid the whispering. Energy, when it was present at all, was derived from speed, not mass. This worked quite nicely for the Preludes and Fugues from Opus 87, as did Levit’s inclination to dissolve the notes into architectural elements. Quirky, in the best sense; a little as if Gyro Gearloose had taken up the piano.

The Largo of the Sonata no longer stood, as with Kissin, in spiritual proximity to Debussy; it was pushed toward twelve-tone music and Schoenberg. “Pointillist,” one might say. Or “frayed.” The ostentatious renunciation of loudness – especially effective in the broad expanse of the Grosses Festspielhaus – was not without appeal. Levit’s delicate, soiree-appropriate soft, and even touch was consistently admirable – especially in the Brahms Intermezzi Op. 117 and Four Ballades Op. 10 of the first half. Brahms benefits from this, to a point – though the approach shifts the burden of generating tension from the performer to the audience: either it sits in raptness (which, in the restless first half, could hardly be claimed) or one faces a certain risk of the audience nodding off.

The question also arose whether there might be such a thing as “over-interpretation,” so much did Levit demand of every phrase in these simply beautiful Intermezzi; so introspective every attack had to become; so brooding every pause: every tiniest note a carefully curated miniature. The Ballades, too, received this detail-minded, intelligent treatment. Like pulled pork, it seemed: so tender it fell apart if you as much as looked at it – a tightrope walk between touching and tiresome. The contrast of the thunderous leap into the B minor Ballade, as rough-hewn as Michelangeli liked to play it, came out all the sharper in this setting. Sweetening the close was another Brahms Intermezzo as encore – holding back the already-breaking-out just once more, and making the already-jubilation-primed remainder of the audience cheer all the harder.


Follow @ClassicalCritic